Yet Another Breaker Repairer

[jdm]

We must not sweat the small stuff but the impudence of some self-called professionals is appalling.
My mom's couldn't set time on her Cartier quartz alarm clock, I dodged looking at it for too long, she being a lady of action after a while brought it to a local faux jewelry shop. It came back after various weeks as "the laboratory could not get the part". I knew right away that was a big lie so finally took it to my bench. The time setting problem was literally nothing, only the brass knob that caps on the plastic setting arbor needed to be squeezed a tiny bit.

I wouldn't be even posting this if it didn't happen that one of the screws attaching the folding base to the hinge was broken with the head glued in place. I couldn't remember my mom had told me about this but proceeded to take the hinge apart (the plated caps are a bit stubborn), drill the stump out, retap M2.2, and make a new countersunk screw. I didn't had a 0.35mm slitting saw (now ordering it) so the slot came a bit wider. Mom was happy having her clock back and told me the support was not broken, as she paid attention to never force it the wrong way. But some butcherer at the "laboratory" did, then happily tried to cover up. 

[oldhippy]

England is just the same with most things (I'm excluding watch/clock repairs because I have no need for there services) you try and get any other thing done and they don't want to know, it will take weeks or months no body has parts in stock, it has to be ordered. Everyone blames bloody covid 19.  No pride in work all they want is your money or a big fat pay check at the end of the week or month for doing bugger all. England is one big shit hole. 

I will now sit back and wait for the shit to hit the fan.

[KarlvonKoln]

2 hours ago, oldhippy said:

I will now sit back and wait for the shit to hit the fan.

I think you'll find a large number of us agreeing with you.  Here in the states, the situation isn't much different.  Employers don't seem to want to pay a professional the amount one should make; and training is costly, and so is equipment.  So they pay crappy wages and often hire temps, and just fire those people if they mess up too often.  Rather than having experienced employees which become close to indispensable, these days they view employees as disposable and replaceable.  They no longer seem to value the concept that a customer will gravitate towards a business where the employees are knowledgeable, and can give them a quality service or product, save them time and keep them from making multiple trips.  
My little under-the-table watch service has been keeping me very busy.  All I do is by-the-book service for whatever timepiece is brought to me.  Plus I polish up the case a bit too.  And I don't even advertise at all.  Word of mouth keeps me busy with customers.  I've spent some time cleaning up the messes left by other "technicians" and next thing I knew, I had quite a number of devoted customers telling their friends about me.  That, and I like to take a bit of time to explain things to my customers; to educate them a bit about their watch and why it needs certain things, why it must be serviced every five years (or for quartz, why we need to replace the dead battery right away) and why we charge the prices we do, and what we give for those prices.  They always tell me they appreciate that I do this, and seem so much more comfortable with prices, knowing what they're for.
That really seems to be all that an experienced consumer wants: a business that offers true quality, just a decent product or service, and employees who know what they're doing and can actually help (and are paid well enough to stick around).  I agree - when a business wakes up and goes back to that mode of operation, they begin prospering more.  Conversely - cutting the budget to the bone and making every facet of the operation profit-centric does nothing but serve greed at the upper levels.  It does nothing for the business's purpose or reputation.  (That's actually how we can tell which CEOs care about that kind of thing.)

[oldhippy]

Here in England you cannot sack a person right away, you have to give them one verbal warning then if they don't do the job correctly you have to notify them by 2  letters before you can sack them, then they might take you to court for unfair dismissal. The bloody world has gone mad. 

[HectorLooi]

2 minutes ago, oldhippy said:

Here in England you cannot sack a person right away, you have to give them one verbal warning then if they don't do the job correctly you have to notify them by 2  letters before you can sack them, then they might take you to court for unfair dismissal. The bloody world has gone mad. 

And it's even worse in the public sector. The worker's unions are so powerful that bosses can't even get rid of problem workers.

And in the private sector, good technicians who can correctly diagnose and rectify problems with the lowest repair costs are the ones who will get the sack.

Indeed, the world is completely mad.

[jdm]

2 hours ago, oldhippy said:

Here in England you cannot sack a person right away,

That is just right if you think about it, otherwise abuse and unfairness would be way too easy. Anyway immediate dismissal is possible in some cases, e.g. violence. https://www.gov.uk/dismissal/reasons-you-can-be-dismissed

My post had nothing to do with labor regulations, unions or the like, but rather with honesty or lack of it, because I know for a fact that the shop "laboratory" is most likely an unregistered individual.
The other nice episode was when mom was charged nice money to repair her old washing machine, she complained about it making a strange noise, the guy replaced a solenoid. Of course that didn't stopped the noise that was due to some lose drum spring or mounting. The old machine was eventually replaced, and I still have the perfectly working "broken" solenoid, in fact it seems to me it's a new part still boxed.

I guess the moral of all this is, when someone close to you need some repair don't be lazy and try to fix it right away.